154 KING GEORGE'S SOUND 



that the fish found there seem to agree in species very 

 closely with those found in the Great Bight, a circumstance 

 which rather surprised me, considering the marked differ- 

 ence in the characters of the two coast lines, and the fact 

 that the water of the Sound is much shallower than that of 

 the Bight. 



I spent several days fishing in the Sound, going out 

 with the fishermen in their boats, and on one or two 

 occasions proceeding to sea with them. At this time 

 (1889) whales were sometimes captured by the fishermen 

 quite close to the coast, and a few years further back it 

 was not an uncommon occurrence for a whale to enter 

 the Sound, just as they used to enter Port Jackson and 

 other great harbours. As the capture of a whale is a 

 valuable windfall to the fishermen, the larger boats always 

 had a line, harpoon, and spears aboard, and on the 15th 

 of October the boat in which I was harpooned a large 

 dolphin. It was about eleven feet long, and although 

 I had previously only seen a picture of the species, I at 

 once recognised it as a Risso's dolphin {Grampus gris). 

 There could be no mistaking the species, and the peculiarly 

 long, narrow flukes and toothless upper jaw were quite 

 sufficient to establish its identity. It was of a dark grey 

 colour on the back and tail-end of the body, and yellowish 

 grey on the front, and the sides were covered with 

 irregularly shaped markings of light colour, causing the 

 animal to appear as if it had been scrabbled over. It 

 weighed more than five hundredweight, but was easily 

 killed and got on board without difficulty, at a spot about 

 nine miles west of Harding Point. 



Dolphins are often captured in this neighbourhood, 

 but the fishermen had never seen one of this species 

 before. The kind that is usually seen about here does 

 not perceptibly differ from Delphinus delphis^ varying in 

 length, for apparently adult animals, from six to eight 

 feet, and seldom weighing much more than a couple of 

 hundredweight, though I heard of a dolphin, sometimes 

 seen here, which exceeded twelve feet in length. Accord- 

 ing to the whalers, the "small dolphin," as they call it, 



